"While the mighty spirit Lerpiu is supposed to be embodied in the rain-maker, it is also thought to inhabit a certain hut which serves as a shrine. In front of the hut stands a post to which are fastened the horns of many bullocks that have been sacrificed to Lerpiu; and in the hut is kept a very sacred spear which bears the name of Lerpiu and is said to have fallen from heaven six generations ago. As fallen stars are also called Lerpiu, we may suspect that an intimate connexion is supposed to exist between meteorites and the spirit which animates the rain-maker" (Frazer, op. cit., p. 32). Here then we have a house of the dead inhabited by Lerpiu, who can also enter the body of the rain-maker and animate him, as well as the ancient spear and the falling stars, which are also animate forms of the same god, who obviously is the homologue of Osiris, and is identified with the spear and the falling stars.
In spring when the April moon is a few days old bullocks are sacrificed to Lerpiu. "Two bullocks are led twice round the shrine and afterwards tied by the rain-maker to the post in front of it. Then the drums beat and the people, old and young, men and women, dance round the shrine and sing, while the beasts are being sacrificed, 'Lerpiu, our ancestor, we have brought you a sacrifice. Be pleased to cause rain to fall.' The blood of the bullocks is collected in a gourd, boiled in a pot on the fire, and eaten by the old and important people of the clan. The horns of the animals are attached to the post in front of the shrine" (pp. 32 and 33).
[194] In Northern Nigeria an official who bore the title of Killer of the Elephant throttled the king "as soon as he showed signs of failing health or growing infirmity". The king-elect was afterwards conducted to the centre of the town, called Head of the Elephant, where he was made to lie down on a bed. Then a black ox was slaughtered and its blood allowed to pour all over his body. Next the ox was flayed, and the remains of the dead king, which had been disembowelled and smoked for seven days over a slow fire, were wrapped up in the hide and dragged along to the place of burial, where they were interred in a circular pit. (Frazer, op. cit., p. 35).
[195] "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 392.
[196] "The eye of the sun-god, which was subsequently called the eye of Horus and identified with the Uræus-snake on the forehead of Re and of the Pharaohs, the earthly representatives of Re, finally becoming synonymous with the crown of Lower Egypt, was a mighty goddess, Uto or Buto by name" (Alan Gardiner, Article "Magic (Egyptian)" in Hastings' Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, p. 268, quoting Sethe.)
[197] For an account of the distribution of this story see E. Sidney Hartland, "The Legend of Perseus"; also W. J. Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia".
[198] The original "boat of the sky" was the crescent moon, which, from its likeness to the earliest form of Nile boat, was regarded as the vessel in which the moon (seen as a faint object upon the crescent), or the goddess who was supposed to be personified in the moon, travelled across the waters of the heavens. But as this "boat" was obviously part of the moon itself, it also was regarded as an animate form of the goddess, the "Eye of Re". When the Sun, as the other "Eye," assumed the chief rôle, Re was supposed to traverse the heavens in his own "boat," which was also brought into relationship with the actual boat used in the Osirian burial ritual.
The custom of employing the name "dragon" in reference to a boat is found in places as far apart as Scandinavia and China. It is the direct outcome of these identifications of the sun and moon with a boat animated by the respective deities. In India the Makara, the prototype of the dragon, was sometimes represented as a boat which was looked upon as the fish-avatar of Vishnu, Buddha or some other deity.
[199] This is an instance of the well-known tendency of the human mind to blend numbers of different incidents into one story. An episode of one experience, having been transferred to an earlier one, becomes rationalized in adaptation to its different environment. This process of psychological transference is the explanation of the reference to Elephantine as the source of the d'd', and has no relation to actuality. The naïve efforts of Brugsch and Gauthier to study the natural products of Elephantine for the purpose of identifying d'd' were therefore wholly misplaced.
[200] In Hartland's "Legend of Perseus" a collection of variants of this story will be found.